so..... driving on the freeway this morning to drop my daughter off for school the truck started to lose power. backed off a bit and just kept slowin down, spittin and sputterin and I figured great.. need a fuel filter and i'm tapped out figures.. well got off the freeway and it ran fine in town up till the higher rpm's, got on backroads and could barely maintain 30mph without throwing a huge white cloud behind me.

specs here 1993 12v, 3200governor spring, custom fuel pin, smoke and star screw tuned to where it runs good without a lot of smoke. all (factory) gauges look good.to broke for the ones I need

possibly a bad injector? or my pump crapping out. it'll smoke black if I get on it hard but about half way through the gear it just goes white.




and for the record.. I think I like replying here rather than posting here.

 

possibly the head gasket, once you start getting into the higher rpm's the higher boost pressure could trigger a leak, which would explain the white smoke. and loss of power

 

Thats what I was thinking.. i'll know more when I take my lunch and go mess with it.. just want to post here and make sure I cover all bases.

 

or i was thinkin, you might have a stuck open injector, unburned atomized fuel creates white smoke and could cause a loss of power.

 

The way it was popping makes me lean towards a timing related issue. Ppumped trucks not correctly timed will do exactly what you are seeing. Maybe something in the pump let go and its not advancing the timing correctly. Does your oil smell like diesel fuel? If it does, then the shaft seal has failed and is pumping fuel into the timing housing, which will reduce case pressure and reduce timing.

 

OK, my lunchtime experiment.

oil: was about 1qt below the safe level.. haven't checked it in maybe 2 weeks so I guess I burned 2 quarts in the past 1000mi which is rare. topped that off.

coolant: as well as to be expected.

no smells of fuel or exhaust in either.

I fired it up, it sputtered first try and lit just fine the second, varied the rpm for awhile, did a few short laps in the parking lot to let it warm up, reeks of unburnt fuel but very little white smoke, no spitting or popping.

the only thing I did notice out of place was it was a little wet around the throttle shaft on my injection pump so that may be causing the issue after it get "freeway" warm.

---AutoMerged DoublePost---

so, the 30 miles home was pretty uneventful. seems like it's running a little low on fuel, a little noisier than usual and a few minor pops here and there at higher rpm's... gonna get a new filter and throw it on. but it used 1/4 tank of fuel which is waaaaaay more than normal. so i dunno.... maybe an injector stuck open then snapped back a bit later? I think in the morning i'm gonna pull the injectors and clean them up.. thats all I can think of right now.

 

can't duplicate it.. but gonna keep trying.. guess chalk it up to being low on oil?

anyways gonna close this out< keep checking things out because this is gonna bug me that it could happen again and leave me stranded in the future.. especially with a few 4-6hr trips coming up.